ALEPPO, SYRIA—On the strategic heights of Saif al-Dwala, rebel fighters wage war from the ornate salons of Syrians richly rewarded for propping up dictator Bashar Assad.

Their fine china now lies smashed on a stairway, a primitive yet clever alarm system.

Whenever someone climbs the concrete stairwell in the lowrise apartment block, the crack and crunch of porcelain alerts rebel snipers that someone is approaching from behind.

“Allahu akbar!” the local commander, whose nom de guerre is Abu Mohammed, shouted up through the darkness as he led me up to his snipers’ nest early Thursday afternoon.

“Allahu akbar! God is Great!” one of his men replied in kind, signalling it was safe to keep coming. At least for the moment.

The Free Syrian Army and Assad’s forces stare each other down across a narrow street littered with chunks of concrete, or the scattered belongings of residents who fled long ago.

Only the men with guns remain, trying to kill each other on a front line where progress is measured in inches, elusive victories by city blocks.

And the rebel dead are mourned as martyrs.

In some of the once-luxurious apartments, where boastful chandeliers hang above floors scarred by shell casings and broken glass, outside walls have been blasted clean off.

At one, Abu Yusuf, a Syrian army defector in camouflaged combat fatigues, his face obscured by a tightly wrapped blue head scarf, strode up to a thigh-high barrier built from a radiator leaning against a stack of concrete squares.

It held a black sign that said simply, in Arabic script: “Allah.”

Pausing for a deep breath, he peeked down the street, and fired a single shot from his Kalashnikov at government forces.

“Allahu akbar!” he shouted, and comrades hollered in agreement: “God is Great!”

When Assad’s forces didn’t answer with their own fire, another rebel, this one in a dark track suit and white running shoes, stuck his assault rifle around the corner.

Arms outstretched, back pressed against the wall, he pulled the trigger and let fly a short burst of bullets.

Then, after a quick retreat, he decided to put an exclamation point on it. He took two quick steps back toward the void and fired a single shot.

He smiled like a duffer who had made the green in two strokes.

The rebels’ more skilled snipers wait and watch a broken piece of mirror leaning on a windowsill, and when they see a target pop around the corner, they shoot for a kill.

“The war here is not fought by tanks,” Abu Mohammed told me over tea, warming his hands over a small fire in the garden that serves as his command post. “The government hides those behind walls.

“Here, it’s a snipers’ war, through holes in the wall.”

While Canada and other Western governments say they want Assad to give up power, they refuse to give the Free Syrian Army rebels the military means to make that happen.

Almost two years into the civil war, more than 60,000 Syrians have been killed, according to the United Nations’ estimate. And there is no end in sight to the bloodshed.

Abu Mohammed’s front line last moved 36 days ago, when he says his men were close to seizing al-Ezaa street two blocks to the north.

He said that would have given the rebels control over high ground that has a panoramic view across Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and the country’s economic capital.

But the rebels ran low on ammunition and had to pull back, Abu Mohammed says. Now they are stuck in a deadly stalemate.

It seems a familiar strategy: Assad’s forces give up poorer districts in cities across Syria to defend the wealthiest areas, where their support among Alawites — the branch of Shia Islam to which Assad belongs — and other minorities is strongest.

Then they dig in and fight hard, while Assad bides his time.

It seems Assad expects his enemies to tire of war, and the outside world to fear that instability in Syria is too big a threat to a volatile region, to let his regime collapse — and perhaps the whole country with it.

But the poorly armed rebels still think they can win, whether the world helps or not.

The men in Mohammed’s Asalaam, or Peace Brigade, have come too far, shed too much blood, and seen too many comrades die to think of surrender.

One of the fighters, aged 16, quit Grade 9 to join the war. A 19-year-old gave up a job in a big car-parts shop to fight for his freedom.

They already see a small victory in the slice of high ground they now hold.

One of the apartments among their shooting galleries has elaborate, gilded ceilings and picture frames, and a polished silver tea service in a cabinet adorned with beautifully carved flowers.

Colour portraits of family elders and ancestors still hang above bouquets of fake flowers.

The rebels might have more use for the family’s colour TV, but shrapnel blew out the screen. It’s too close to the window, anyway. The stone floors are stained with several large pools of dried blood.

A sign next to the front door says the apartment was a home of the al-Faham family, members of Syria’s business elite, Sunni traders said to have gotten rich by currying favour with the Assads’ 42-year dynasty.

The printed bed sheets that Assad’s followers left behind now hang from ropes across neighbourhood streets to give rebels some cover when they cross, except when storms like one Wednesday blow them down.

Heavy wind also dropped a government propaganda leaflet into the rebels’ warren, where driving rain tore a piece of it off.

The black Arabic script, on a sheet of plain white paper, was still clear to read.

“Bashar Assad is the leader of the nation and will protect its rights,” it said.

Abu Mohammad stopped to step on it, angrily shredding it with the toe of his boot.

“Look how these people tried to be so loyal to Bashar,” the rebel commander said. “And now where are they?”

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